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I strongly suggest that you read the first part before reading this part as I can assure you that the old man still has a long story to tell.
Blockchain involves a lot of technical terms which we are going to learn about in the second part. Thinking of running away, don’t, as we are going to understand each and every term and the complete functioning of blockchain through real-life analogies. So grab yourself something to eat and start reading…
What the old man suggested in the story was an example of DISTRIBUTED LEDGER TECHNOLOGY (DLT)? A distributed ledger is a type of database that is shared, replicated, and synchronized among the members of a DECENTRALIZED network. The distributed ledger records the transactions, such as the exchange of assets or data, among the participants in the network.

Taking cues from the story, the book of promises which the brothers maintained is the ledger book. A ledger book is a record of transactions which is maintained to ensure that no one forgets h…

In the first part, instead of bombarding you with technical jargons, I will tell you a story. This story will form the basis of understanding the technical jargons which will get introduced in Part 2 of this series. There once lived an old man who had 10 sons. They all lived together. The old man was a clever man. He made each son choose a different profession so that they all could help out each other. One farmed while the other one hunted, the third one made pottery while the fourth one became a milkman. Hence, all decisions were taken by him. The family lived in this manner for quite some time. However, all the produce was brought to the old man for distribution among the brothers. You can say the old man was a central authority.
The old man thought that since he has to die one day, he must think of a solution that the brothers can apply to distribute the various items they produced. He knew that the centralized authority which he has commanded over the years will not remain after h…

We learned about the basics of cryptography in the first post. We then learned about the types of cryptography – symmetric and asymmetric (private and public key cryptography). Then we mixed both of them to get the hybrid aspect. As if this was not enough, intelligent minds mixed hashing into cryptography to produce digital signatures.
It’s time to learn about this new potion – Digital Signature. Before we delve into detail, we must understand what is hashing. Hashing is a method to ensure that the integrity of the message has not been compromised with. A one-way hash function is used for creating a hash that takes a variable-length string (a message) and produces a fixed-length value called a hash value. This hash value will only change if a change has occurred in the message. If there is no change, then the hash value will not change if you apply the one-way hash function 1 time or a 1000 times. Let’s take an example to understand this.
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You may read multiple posts on the various blogs and websites where you are given tips as to how to pass the exam in the first go, refer which books and solve which questions. In this blog post I’m not going to bombard you with those details. Instead, I’m going to share my journey and experience from preparing till passing the CISSP exam in the first attempt. What is CISSP? CISSP stands for Certified Information Systems Security Professional. Congratulations and all the very best to you, if you have decided to opt for the Gold Standard Certification. The exam is offered by ISC2 and contains around 250 questions. You have to book an appointment for the CISSP exam through the ISC2 website where you then redirected to a Pearson Vue website when you register for the exam. The exam costs around 599USD. Phase 1: Deciding It is very important for you to finalize which certification you want to do. Try to research the pros and cons of a certification. Do not just start preparing for a particular…

I wrote a blog post in the month of December where I detailed about the new CISSP CAT format being launched by the (ISC)2. The post gave details about the new exam – what would it be all about, what does the new exam mean for you and important points to consider. Well, since I had passed the exam way back in July, there was no way, I would decide to sit for this difficult exam again. Luckily, few of my friends gave the CISSP CAT exam and passed it, so I spoke to them to understand their experience with this new exam format and decided to write about it. So here it goes… The Study Material
The first question that comes to everyone’s mind is – Do I need to look for a new study material since the exam format has changed. The answer is NO. The CISSP study material remains the same. My friends referred to the following material, but this is not an exhaustive list in any way. My recommendation would be to stick to one particular book and get to know every word and line of it. It is extremel…

Systems Security Certified Practitioner (SSCP) exam is offered by (ISC)2. When I prepared for this exam, there was hardly any material for preparation or blog posts to help me understand the experience of this exam. In this blog post, I will try to explain to you how to study for this exam and the experience of this exam.
Before I begin, let me congratulate on your journey to becoming an SSCP. Although this certification may not be highly recognized as the CISSP certification, still it shows your employer and the world that you are really interested to pursue your career in this field. You become a practitioner in this field. What is SSCP?
You would like to read CISSP vs SSCP in case you want to have a comparison between the exams. SSCP is a 3-hour long examination having 125 questions. You are required to score a minimum of 700 out of 1000. 25 questions are not graded as they are research oriented questions. It is important to note that since these questions are not graded, you need …

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The views and opinions expressed herein are my own. They do NOT intend to represent the views or opinions of my employer or any other organization. Any information represented as fact are believed by me to be true, but I make no legal claim as to their certainty.